Did You Know...

This one slipped through the cracks late last week but it’s worth mentioning. Senator Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and gun control advocate, is upping the rhetorical ante just a bit:

“The time has come, America, to step up and ban these weapons,” Feinstein said. “The other very important part of this bill is to ban large capacity ammunition feeding devices — those that hold more than 10 rounds. We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines. Limiting magazine capacity is critical, because it is when a criminal, a drug dealer, a deranged individual has to pause to change magazines and reload that, the police or brave bystanders have the opportunity to take that individual down.”

“The problem with expanding this is that, you know, with the advent of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), which I think is a new phenomenon as a product of the Iraq War, it’s not clear how the seller or transferer of a firearm covered by this bill would verify that an individual was a member, or a veteran, and that there was no impairment of that individual with respect to having a weapon like this. I think you have to – if you’re going to do this, find a way that veterans who are incapacitated for one reason or another mentally, don’t have access to this kind of weapon.”

If Feinstein were truly interested in keeping those weapons out of the hands of people with mental issues, her bill wouldn’t have exempted Congress.

Moe Lane at Red State pointed out that Feinstein — in addition to the general offense to veterans — is wrong on the PTSD facts:

…the properties of post-traumatic stress disorder were first codified in the Vietnam era, and became an actual recognized condition in 1980. Something like it had been suspected for some time previously, of course: the conditions of World War I were sufficiently horrific that doctors started realizing that something was going on (the term was ‘shell shock,’ which phrase has by the way long since been incorporated into Standard English). Translation: contra Feinstein’s mistaken belief (click the link), PTSD was a condition prior to, during, and after the last “assault weapons ban.”

The fact that “Einstein” appears in her name is the only evidence of an IQ over room temperature.